


Survivors guilt

by AroAceMess



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy is old tired bisexual and full of guilt, Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, F/F, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Mild Gore, Murder Wives, Pre-Canon, joe and Nicky parent a depressed immortal warrior, technically, very reverent, witch trials baybee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25234183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AroAceMess/pseuds/AroAceMess
Summary: The air feels different tonight, while it had been charged and anxious and terrified for days and days today it feels subdued it feels triumphant. She doesn’t know now but these are the last few hours she’ll spend with Quynh for hundreds of years.Andromache and Quynh during their witch incarnation and then Andy in the aftermath.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 4
Kudos: 126





	Survivors guilt

**Author's Note:**

> Charlize Theron can step on me
> 
> Bottom text 
> 
> If you’ve also watched the old guard 17 times in the past twelve hours and now just want a 500 season tv show chronicling the intricacies of the Andy/Quynh and joe/Nicky relationships clap your hands 
> 
> Anyway enjoy these wlw ramblings

Andromache doesn’t know how long they’ve been in the forsaken dungeon, doesn’t even know if it is a dungeon, they are killed and they survive and they are locked away again until they are to be killed again over and over no food no water no light nothing to show the passage of time apart from the guards outside the door changing on rotation. 

They are filthy hair matted with blood and brain and bone and grease skin covered in each other’s blood and so much dirt arms and legs shackled to the wall yet Quynh is still as beautiful as ever. She grins still, even in this awful place, teeth stained red with her own blood she looks half feral but still so so beautiful. A true god. 

She spits her own blood on the floor and says ‘how do you want to die next Andromache? Do you want to be hung or burnt alive or boiled or torn apart and eaten by dogs?’ She laughs and laughs and laughs until a priest comes and tries to exorcise her again. No one else will truly ever call her Andromache again, only Quynh. 

The tension and terror in the air fuels her gladly becoming this monstrous thing they want to kill, they want to defeat and she does it so well. She spits at them scratches them curses them until her voice grows hoarse and then when they slit her throat or cut off her head and her vocal chords grow back new she screams at them in her refreshed voice, she makes sure they are the only ones they’re focusing on because if their time is occupied no one else will die. To them she is the fire sent to burn up the whole world and she burns so bright, too bright. 

The air feels different tonight, while it had been charged and anxious and terrified for days and days today it feels subdued it feels triumphant. She doesn’t know now but these are the last few hours she’ll spend with Quynh for hundreds of years. 

Quynh turns to her in the damp dark grins and says ‘I’ve not been burnt alive yet Andromache, how do you think it’ll feel.’ She faces her, this beautiful insane god she loves so reverently and despite it all grins back at her and says in a whisper ‘excruciating’ they huff out twin giggles like little girls and not chained up monsters and Quynh looks at her still smiling and says ‘just you and me’ and she means it when she says ‘until the end’ 

The door opens and the guards and a priest traipse in, there is no fear in their faces there is triumph and it scares her. She can’t remember the last time she felt terror like this, she thinks it was when she was still mortal. They unlock Quynh’s shackles and not hers and the priest says too calm ‘you are too powerful together’ then a door on the opposite side of their cell is wrenched open and she sees it. An iron coffin. 

Quynh sees it as well knows what it is and she starts fighting, struggling against her captors screaming in terror, it’s a strange too foreign sound to hear in Quynh’s voice. She’s fighting too struggling against her own shackles, can feel them slicing into her wrists but she doesn’t care, can’t care. This is her god her love her best friend her sister in arms her partner her Quynh, terrified and dangerously mortal. 

She screams and screams over and over the only thing she can seem to remember how to say is Quynh’s name. Screaming and screaming and screaming as they drag her across the room and lock her into that hideous iron cage. She feels her wrists break. And all at once she can’t see her anymore, was robbed of the ability to commit anything of her form to memory except terrified eyes staring at her through openings in a metal face and screaming her name ‘Andromache! Andromache!’ over and over seared into her soul. They shut the doors and even those eyes, those beautiful eyes are lost to her now. 

She screams and screams eventually the words falling way to guttural sounds of pain and anger until she finally dies of blood loss from struggling against her cuffs. She feels it when Quynh dies for the first time, feels her drown feels her pain and her terror and her anger and she prays to every god she can remember and a few she’s forgotten to take away her immortality, to rend her mortal and let her die to not curse her to drowning over and over in bloody salt water for eternity. 

They kill her again and again, she doesn’t care anymore doesn’t taunt them doesn’t curse them all she can say is Quynhs name over and over again like a prayer. It’s months later that they find her, the men from their dreams all those years ago Nicolo and yusef. They break her out of her prison and promise to help her search for the drowning woman. They see her too in their dreams feel her mind breaking taste the salt water mixed with her blood filling her lungs feel her pain and her rage. 

They search in England for 50 years for word of the iron witch, for a location to search. She drowns herself a hundred hundred times trying to find her sunken god. After 50 years yusef and nicolo want to move on, they are drawing too much attention and everyone on that boat is likely dead now anyway - it takes them binding her from neck to knee and killing her over and over the whole boat ride from England to Sweden to pry her from her fruitless quest and preserve their anonymity. And even then when they are a world away they keep her chained up in the basement of the little cottage they have got for themselves for ten full years before she’s safely deemed to not be a flight risk by the two of them. 

She tries her best to not think of Quynh again but it’s a meaningless endeavour, she will never be able to keep Quynh out of her mind for more than a moment between the dreams of her dying over and over to the crushing guilt of allowing her to be caged to the painful once happy memories of the nebulous before she is a constant shadow over her thoughts. 

She throws herself into the work, getting better training harder saving more people and fucks every willing man and woman she can get her hands on. She’s the avenging angel to dying peoples and the muse to countless artisans leaves invisible stains in every history book on earth in the same way leaves quiet impressions in museums and libraries. On of said artists she finds herself shaking up with tells her she has the most haunted eyes he’s ever seen, she supposes he’s right. 

Years and years down the line when nile, so hilariously terrifyingly young, looks at her and asks her if she believes in a higher power she scoffs and calls her a child, what she doesn’t tell her is that she cannot believe in a higher power because what merciful creator would take her beautiful bright living Quynh and reduce her to a caged crazed thing.And yet she still prays to each and every one of them for both their deaths. She hopes they will be in quick succession as while they weren’t created in the same instant, soulmates physically incapable of being separated like joe and Nicky, her soul could not comfortably exist in a world in which her god doesn’t live. caged or otherwise.

**Author's Note:**

> Can’t even remember writing half of this I just went into a wlw haze and this is what I was left with at the end 
> 
> Remember kids Charlize Theron legally owns all our asses and have a great day / night and stay safe out there xx 
> 
> Hit me up here [@aro-ace-mess](https://aro-ace-mess.tumblr.com/)


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